


like we don't have air

by belatrix



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 1.7k of subtle kink negotiation basically, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 19:38:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15444345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: The marks on Jon’s body aren’t all from  swords and daggers.More than half of them belong to her.





	like we don't have air

 

 

 

The marks on Jon’s body aren’t all from  swords and daggers.

More than half of them belong to her.

There is always the ghost of a primal, urgent combination of guilt and satisfaction passing over her face, when she sees them left behind by her nails, her teeth. Long, twisting, angry lines across the hard expanse of his back, shadows blooming on his collarbone, the torn skin at his thighs and abdomen. It’s something secret, something sacred.

It’s evidence. Of her. Of _them_.

A smaller, carefully quiet part of her, tucked right inside her ribcage, feels something like unease, something like alarm. A King is not supposed to break.

But he’d let her break him if it made her happy, she knows. No matter that it never would.

It’s the way he lets her push him back now, both her hands on his chest, pale on pale, her fingers splayed over the ugly wound over his heart ―not hers, that. Never hers. She will draw blood, yes, but not from there; his heart just might be the only true thing she has left.

The skin at his neck is hot under her lips, and she keeps pushing, and he keeps letting her. Her nails scrap flesh and he shudders, his throat moving with her mouth on it as his back hits the wall. She hears the muffled thud, his soft groan. She knows it hurt him, but he’s had worse, they both have.

He’ll be fine. He always is.

Or maybe he simply hasn’t been, ever.

None of this will ever leave the chamber, as it shouldn’t. Outside these walls, beyond the bed and the furs on the floor and the fire in the hearth ―he is not Jon, not truly, and his gaze is a dark, severe thing, his voice is strong, the rare smiles he gives her are those of a brother and a King. Here, he is a boy who wants to remember what love might feel like; a man who’s grown far too accustomed to pain to be able to let it go.

This very pain is both his pleasure and hers, then. All her life Sansa’s been stripped of control. In here Jon gladly lends her his, because he was given too much of it, too abruptly.

“Sansa,” he says, and it’s a faltering, hot breath burrowing into her hair. “ _Sansa_.”

He is still pressed against the cold wall, her fingers are still poised over his heartbeat. It’s getting faster, now. “What do you want?” she mutters against his pulse, because there is a certain pride in hearing him say it, and an abrupt, sharp sting of love, too.

He looks down at her, eyes nearly black in the firelight, and only takes a breath. He won’t say it just yet, then. She’ll have to coax it from him ―because this is something she keeps forgetting, sometimes, that he has his pride, too. It’s hard to be a Stark and not have it.

“Do you always have to be so utterly stubborn?” she says, with half-hearted exasperation. “A lot of things would be easier if you weren’t.”

“I know that,” he says, low and rough, sucking a sharp inhale as she bites down on his collarbone hard enough for it to bruise. “I suppose ― _Sansa_ ― I suppose I’m used to making things harder than they should be.”

She halts, then, drawing back a little, dropping a gentle kiss on the pink, blooming bite mark. There is a stinging undercurrent of truth to his words, because―

Because Jon is a soldier, and Jon is a leader, and Jon is a King: underneath it all, Jon is afraid. Not of war, or of death, but of life. Of _touch._ (Touch that does not come from fighting.)

This is a truth not many people know. Sansa understands without him telling her, because she’s afraid of the very same things, those she used to wish for with all her might as a girl. And yet, in the most shadowed corner of her heart, she’s almost glad of it; it’s a part of what makes them drawn to each other, what keeps them together, a space between them nobody can walk inside of. A place no-one else can possibly inhabit.

He is the one man she’s never afraid of, but can allow herself to be afraid _with_.

But she will not tell him this, not now. He might just already know. Instead she kisses his skin again, like a fleeting apology for the bite, and the bites that will follow.

“Terribly hard,” she agrees, and allows herself a smile as her hand slips lower and lower without preamble. Her fingers close around his cock over rough-spun cloth, perhaps with more force than necessary, and his mouth falls open on a stuttered exhale. “Oh. Terribly _hard_ , indeed, your Grace.”

He laughs, then, a short, gasping thing that’s left his throat before he can rein it in, the kind he keeps only for her. “I don’t feel particularly graceful, right now.”

She answers with a smile and her fingers undoing laces, letting his breeches fall to the floor. “I shall call you something else, then,” she hums, leaning slightly away to allow him room to step out from the pooling fabric at his feet. “But what? The _White Wolf_ is somewhat overused, I feel. And you do remind me rather more of a direpup than a direwolf, at the moment.”

Another short cough of laughter, and he gives her a look of gentle reprimand. A mockery of hurt. “You’re cruel to me, Sansa.”

She shrugs, a shoulder rising and falling indolently. It’s not an entirely honest movement, but rather a practiced one. And she holds his gaze. “Isn’t that what you want?”

And this, right here, is the moment, every moment of every night, the space between two breaths where they stare at each other and have to decide ―what it is that they _want_ , how to give it to one another. It doesn’t always end in scratches and teeth marks, but when it does it has to be explicitly stated that it is, in fact, desired. Sansa knows Jon would never hurt her; and she wants him to know, in his heart, that _she_ would never hurt _him_ , either.

Not even if he would allow her.

Not if he doesn’t want her to.

“Jon," she says, taking his hand between hers. "Isn’t that what you want?”

Again, the cracks of his fractured Northern pride, locking tight behind his eyes, in the set of his mouth. It’s a King’s hesitation to bow, a wolf’s stubborn refusal to bare its throat, but it only lasts for half a dozen heartbeats. He can’t be proud with her for much longer ―at least, not here. Not in this room.

“Yes,” he says, as he always does. _Yes_ , he whispers. It’s as if she tore the word from him.

It’s one small, quiet thing filled to the brim with a myriad of emotions, just like he is, just like his very heart ―feelings torn up and confused and sometimes too high, too much, so that his only alternative is to shove it all away under a face made of stone, something cold and hard enough to make them all sink. A coolness to make them disappear, as if they never existed, as if he never felt them.

Because a soldier is not supposed to feel too much; a King, either. He wants those feelings gone, but deeply, truly doesn’t. And so he doesn’t succeed, but that’s a different story, not for now.

Not for _this_.

“Good,” Sansa says. “Get on the bed, then.”

Another thing that Kings never do, but boys and soldiers cannot escape; he’s too good at following orders, even when he isn’t.

The firelight casts him in shadow as he lays back among the sheets and furs, his eyes black and unblinking and never leaving her face. He looks even paler like this, the scars on his chest sharper, deeper, angrier, like someone drew on him with coal, marked the place where the blade would sink in. She focuses again on his face; he seems younger, with his hair loose and his mouth parted on something he will not speak, with that wordless expectance painted subtly across his face.

She reaches behind her back with idle hands to undo her gown’s simple lacings, doesn’t break her hold on his gaze as she lets the heavy dress slip to the floor. Then she threads her fingers through her hair, loosens her braid, watches him watching her as red tresses fall down over her shoulders, hiding her breasts, shining like spilled blood.

“Sansa,” he says. Only that, only her name, and it’s drawn from his lips like a faithless prayer. He might as well have been on his knees. Not in worship ―she’d never ask that of him―, but in trust. And she might as well have done the same.

She walks to the bed, slowly, slowly, as though something might break. His eyes trail her movements, still on her face, only slipping down once, with lust, with anticipation, with love, with shame. And with guilt.

Always, _that_.

Jon wears his guilt like he wears his cloaks, a thing to shield him, to hide him, and sometimes Sansa can’t bear to look. She wants to tear it off him, leave only tatters behind ―she has enough guilt for the both of them.

And there’s no use in feeling shame, not any longer. Sansa knows you can’t undo the things you’ve done, you can’t erase the things you’ve thought; so you might as well indulge them. Own them. Guilt is unavoidable, but it is for later.

So, now:

In Jon’s bed, climbing over him, moving over him and watching him move with her, she is almost happy. It’s a sentimental thought ―but then, despite the attached violence she’s promised him, this is a sentimental occasion. Once the guilt and the fear and the memories have been tucked away, carefully ignored, with him she _is_ very nearly happy.

It is a thought wild and impossible enough to warrant she can endure whatever war and terror the future will bring.

“Jon,” she breathes, letting her eyes flutter closed for only half a moment as she presses herself down on him, feels his skin burning against hers. He shudders and shifts beneath her, a ripple that travels down his spine, flutters down his stomach, and she grabs roughly at his hands, pins them to the bed when he reaches them up and tries to put them on her hips.

She holds them there with all her strength, digs her nails in until he almost squirms. “I thought you wanted me to be cruel,” she says, a teasing lilt to her voice now, and his mouth curves into a fond half-smile.

“I do,” he says, and she leans down to kiss him with teeth.

 

 

 


End file.
